The first time God irradiated me with his presence I was twenty-one or so. I’d fucked up my graduation from Columbia by not submitting my senior seminar paper on time. Indeed, I hadn’t begun to write it by the deadline (though I had done much of the research, far too much research, to put it simply). Part of me, the thinking part, resisted the power of society’s fraudulent institutions, universities being little different from the Jews’ Temple of Solomon in Jesus’ Jerusalem or the Holy Catholic Church in Galileo’s Renaissance; but part of me still responded to the apes in power. I don’t doubt that some part of Jesus sided with Pilate and Caesar, and with King Herod …)

Lying abed, preparing for sleep, my mind suddenly burst a-light.

I’d been praying to God since childhood, praying fervently, trying to concentrate on what I was saying, trying to project it, even when I was reciting memorized prayers. We’re all used to prayer seeming to be a one-way matter; but here my head was ablaze with divine presence.

Words were obliterated. God used no words with me. Still, there was an irresistible sense of communication. A message was received: without words. Months later in the White Horse Tavern I tried to narrate my experience to a group that included a theology post-doc. He asked me, “If you had to use a word, would “compassion” be appropriate?” “Yes,” I said. “Yes. Compassion. At least it isn’t inaccurate. Isn’t altogether wrong.”

That dude was very pleased. The rest of the group looked bewildered, then bored, then looked away.
I had understood, the next day, back on my feet, that God had been emphasizing that I was a fuck-up, but that he understood, and that I, provided I grow up a little, start getting something done, was still acceptable to him.

At the time I still thought of God as a personal god. I also thought that the frauds of kleptocracies, institutional hypocrisy, was acceptable to him: and would continue to think so for another eight or so years.